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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (2249)	3/26/1999 8:47:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

Using "their" as a singular possessive is the grammatical analog of scratching ones fingernails on a blackboard. Agreed. Beyond grammatical correctness there is the issue of aesthetic standards, a muddy territory in which it is hard to say what is right and wrong, less hard to say what is better or worse. A lot has to do with personal taste: the use of the impersonal "one" is of course technically correct, but I find it pompous and avoid it when I can. My own standard is entirely personal. When in doubt, read it aloud: if it sings, use it; if it doesn't, fix it. Not that my SI posts live up to that goal, but it is an ideal worth striving for.

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (2249)	3/27/1999 7:47:00 AM
From: Jack Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

CTC: I agree with your feelings in general about gender/sex and use of their as a grammatically incorrect surrender to political correctness. I never use "their" in the singular. But I must say that there is an intellectually honest case for doing what you and I don't like: uts.cc.utexas.edu Again, maybe you and I are too rigid, having been taught some very rigid rules based on classical Greek and Latin constructions which should never have been extrapolated into our language. Also, one slightly picky point regarding the German constructions. "Mädchen" is indeed the word for girl and neuter. Greek has a similar construction ("to koritzi"). They tell me that this is so because young children are "sexless", but who knows why it is. Your point is that gender (a grammatical concept) is not always related to maleness or femaleness, and I agree. My son once heard someone say that a young woman had been discriminated against "because of her gender". His response: "Well at least it wasn't because of her declension." But back to my German picky point. Man with only one "n" is the form for "one, people" rather than the noun Mann with double "n". They are pronounced the same. At least that's the way I remember it. Best, Jack